Symphony No. 5 in D major, Op. 107 (‘Reformation’)

Program notes

About the Work

Mendelssohn began this symphony on the same journey to Britain that produced The Hebrides. In September 1829 he wrote to his family from England that he had a new work in mind, and he decided to start on it in London. The occasion he was aiming at lay the following summer: 25 June 1830 was the three-hundredth anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, the statement of faith that Luther’s followers presented to Emperor Charles V in 1530, and celebrations were planned in Protestant Germany. Mendelssohn, born into a Jewish family and baptised a Lutheran as a child, wanted to contribute a symphony built on Luther’s hymn ‘Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott’ (A mighty fortress is our God).

He finished the score in Berlin in the spring of 1830, too late for it to be taken up, and the anniversary passed without it. Two years later, in Paris, François-Antoine Habeneck put it into rehearsal with the Conservatoire orchestra and then dropped it; the players are said to have found it too learned, with too much counterpoint and too little melody. Mendelssohn conducted the first performance himself in Berlin in November 1832. He never performed it again, came to dislike it and would not let it be printed.

The score was finally published in 1868, twenty-one years after his death. That is why it is called No. 5, although it was the second of his five symphonies for full orchestra to be written. It lasts about half an hour.

What to Listen For

The slow introduction starts with a rising four-note figure in the violas that passes up through the strings, as in old church counterpoint. Fanfares in the winds grow more insistent, and then the strings, very quietly, play a rising cadence known as the Dresden Amen, a formula from the church music of Dresden. Wagner later used the same phrase for the Grail in Parsifal. The fast main section is in D minor and has a fierce, dotted theme; the Amen returns, just as quietly, before the reprise.

The second movement is a scherzo in B-flat, light on its feet, with a relaxed trio in G major. The third is short: a sad song in G minor for the first violins, more like an aria than a symphonic slow movement.

Then comes the finale. A single flute plays the first line of ‘Ein feste Burg’, alone and unharmonised. Other instruments join in, a few at a time, and fill out the harmony. The Allegro that follows treats the tune in several ways, including passages of fugue, and the weight of the bass is increased by a contrabassoon (Mendelssohn also asked for a serpent, an obsolete bass wind instrument, in this movement). At the very end the full orchestra plays Luther’s hymn in broad, plain chords.